CHAPTER VI.
CAROLINE HERSCHEL.
Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born at Hanover, March 16th, 1750, and was thus more than eleven years younger than the brother with whose name hers is inseparably associated. She remembered the panic caused by the earthquake of 1755, and her experience barely fell short of the political earthquake of 1848; but the fundamental impressions of her long life were connected with “minding the heavens.”
She was of little account in her family, except as a menial. Her father, indeed, a man of high character and cultivated mind, thought much of her future, and wished to improve her prospects by giving her some accomplishments. So he taught her to play the violin well enough to take part in concerted music. But her instruction was practicable only when her mother was out of the way, or in a particularly good humour. Essentially a “Hausfrau,” Anna Ilse had no sympathy with aspirations. She was hard-working and well-meaning, but narrow and inflexible, and she kept her second daughter strictly to household drudgery. Her literary education, accordingly, got no farther than reading and writing; even the third “R” was denied to her. But she was carefully trained in plain sewing and knitting, and supplied her four brothers with stockings from so early an age that the first specimen of her workmanship touched the ground while she stood upright finishing the toe! Few signs of tenderness were accorded to her. Her eldest brother, Jacob, a brilliant musician, and somewhat high-and-mighty in his ways, did not spare cuffs when she waited awkwardly at table; and her sister, Mrs. Griesbach, evidently took slight notice of her. William, however, showed her invariable affection; and him and her father she silently adored. In 1756, when they both returned from England with the Hanoverian Guard, she recalled how, on the day of their arrival,
“My mother being very busy preparing dinner, had suffered me to go all alone to the parade to meet my father, but I could not find him anywhere, nor anybody whom I knew; so at last, when nearly frozen to death, I came home and found them all at table. My dear brother William threw down his knife and fork, and ran to welcome, and crouched down to me, which made me forget all my grievances. The rest were so happy at seeing one another again that my absence had never been perceived.”
How well one can realise the disconsolate little expedition, the woe-begone entry of the six-year-old maiden, her heart-chill on finding herself forgotten, and the revulsion of joy at her soldier-brother’s cordial greeting!
Isaac Herschel died March 22nd, 1767. He had never recovered the campaign of Dettingen, yet struggled, in spite of growing infirmities, to earn a livelihood by giving lessons and copying music. His daughter was thrown by his loss into a “state of stupefaction,” from which she roused herself, after some weeks, to consider the gloomy outlook of her destiny. She was seventeen, and was qualified, as she reflected with anguish, only to be a housemaid. She was plain in face and small in stature, and her father had often warned her that if she ever married it would be comparatively late in life, when her fine character had unfolded its attractions. Still, she did not lose hope of making her way single-handed. Although over-burthened with servile labours, she contrived, unknown to her mother, to get some teaching in fancy-work from a consumptive girl whose cough from across the street gave the signal for a daybreak rendezvous; trusting that, with this acquirement, and “a little notion of music, she might obtain a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection.” There was “no kind of ornamental needlework, knotting, plaiting hair, stringing beads and bugles, of which she did not make samples by way of mastering the art.” She was then permitted to take some lessons in dressmaking and millinery. But the current of her thoughts was completely changed by an invitation from her brother William to join him at Bath. She was, if possible, to be made into a concert-singer. Yet her voice had never been tried, and its very existence was problematical. It may, then, be suspected that William’s primary motive was to come to the rescue of his poor little Cinderella sister.
Months passed in “harassing uncertainty” as to whether she was to go or stay; months, too, during which her own mind was divided between the longing to follow her rising star, and a certain compunctious clinging to her duties at home. Time, however, did not pass in idleness. Taking no notice of the superior Jacob’s ridicule of her visionary transformation into an artist, she quietly set about practising, with a gag between her teeth, the solo parts of violin concertos, “shake and all,” so that, as she says, “I had gained a tolerable execution before I knew how to sing.” She occupied herself besides in making a store of prospective clothing for relatives, who, she could not but fear, would miss her services. For her withdrawal her mother, however, received from William money-compensation, which enabled her to keep a servant in lieu of her daughter. The parting, when he came to fetch her, in August, 1772, was none the less a sorrowful one; but Caroline had much to distract her mind from dwelling on those she had left behind. She had, besides, much discomfort to endure. Six days and nights in an open stage-carriage were followed by a tempestuous passage; the packet in which they embarked at Helvoetsluys reached Yarmouth dismasted and half-wrecked; and they were finally, not duly landed, but “thrown like balls by two sailors,” on the English coast. After a brief glimpse of London, they started, August 28th, in the night coach for Bath, where Caroline arrived “almost annihilated” by fatigue and want of sleep.
Her training for an unfamiliar life began without delay. She had to learn English, arithmetic, and enough of account-keeping to qualify her for conducting the household affairs; a routine of singing-lessons and practising was entered upon; and she was sent out alone to market, Alexander Herschel lurking behind to see that she came safely out of the mêlée of buyers and sellers, whence she brought home “whatever in her fright she could pick up.” She suffered many things, too, from her brother’s servant, “a hot-headed old Welshwoman,” whose régime was one of rack and ruin to domestic utensils; while heimweh made formidable onslaughts on her naturally serene spirits.
A visit to London, as the guest of Mrs. Colebrook, one of her brother’s pupils, gave her some experience of town gaieties. But the expenses of dress and chairmen shocked her frugal ideas; and she thought the young ladies, whose companionship was offered to her, “very little better than idiots.” As a vocalist, Miss Herschel came easily to the front. After a few months of study, her voice was in demand at evening parties; when her foreign accentuation had been corrected, she took the first soprano parts in “The Messiah,” “Samson,” “Judas Maccabæus,” and other oratorios; and sang as prima donna at the winter concerts both at Bath and Bristol. In accordance with her resolution to appear only where her brother conducted, she declined an engagement for a musical festival at Birmingham. A year’s training in deportment was a preliminary to her début; a celebrated dancing mistress being engaged—to use Caroline’s own phrase—“in drilling me for a gentlewoman. Heaven knows how she succeeded!” A gift of ten guineas from William provided her with a dress which made her, she was told, “an ornament to the stage;” and she was complimented by the Marchioness of Lothian on “pronouncing her words like an Englishwoman.” Her success was decided, and promised to be enduring enough to satisfy her modest ambition of supporting herself independently.